Tweaking the fastest AGP Based System - Part 1

While the rest of the mainstream world moves on to PCI-Express and DDR3, we take a step back to the previous generation hardware. Our aim is to build a scalable AGP benchmark platform with sole purpose: breaking overclocking records. Fueled by HWBot competition we squeeze the best AGP performance from a budget-friendly Asrock motherboard. Which memory goes the fastest? DDR1 or DDR2? Let us find out.

Introduction

Introduction

First of all, I'd want to give credit to Johnny Bravo as he is the co-author of this article and spent a lot of time testing and helping to find answers to all the questions which were raised during the test weeks. I have learned a lot from him and he was the person who got me to take this board out of the box and try to maximize the performance.

Second, we'd like to elaborate on the reason why exactly we chose Asrock's 4Coredual-VSTA to use in these comparisons. In fact, this is pretty simple: AGP + C2D = ?. We haven't found a lot of AGP boards which gave us the possibility to use the newer Core2Duo processors, which is the best performing CPU series at the moment. Another option would have been to choose a system based on NF3 and an AMD Opteron. But, those chips are limited as well when it comes down to maximum overclock. A good CPU will do 3.2Ghz and that's possible with Intel C2D's as well.

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In this article we will guide you through the various aspects of this board, quirks we encountered, chipset limitations, voltage modifications and much more.